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Social media aids diplomacy, disaster response: Pew

U.S. embassies used to pass important security alerts to Americans abroad through word of mouth, Janice Jacobs, assistant secretary of State for consular affairs, said Friday.

Embassy consular sections relayed those warnings, called "warden messages" through pre-organized phone trees or by actually knocking on doors, she said. Later, embassies began sending mass emails to Americans who had registered with them, but those emails usually reached only a handful of citizens living or traveling in those countries.http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20120203_7754.php

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Facebook Members Get More Than They GiveMost Facebook users get more from their "friends" on the social network than they give to their friends, according to a first-of-its-kind study released Friday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Most Facebook users receive more from their Facebook friends than they give, according to a new study that for the first time combines server logs of Facebook activity with survey data to explore the structure of Facebook friendship networks and measures of social well-being.

These data were then matched with survey responses. And the new findings show that over a one-month period:

40% of Facebook users in our sample made a friend request, but 63% received at least one request

Users in our sample pressed the like button next to friends' content an average of 14 times, but had their content "liked" an average of 20 times

Users sent 9 personal messages, but received 12

12% of users tagged a friend in a photo, but 35% were themselves tagged in a photo

"The explanation for this pattern is fascinating for a couple of reasons," noted Prof. Keith Hampton, the lead author of the Pew Internet report, Why most Facebook users get more than they give. "First, it turns out there are segments of Facebook power users who contribute much more content than the typical user. Most Facebook users are moderately active over a one-month time period, so highly active power users skew the average. Second, these power users constitute about 20%-30% of Facebook users, but the striking thing is that there are different power users depending on the activity in question. One group of power users dominates friending activity. Another dominates 'liking' activity. And yet another dominates photo tagging."http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Facebook-users.aspx